... in the nuclear ‘arms race’ could create clean fuel – or deadly bombs

• The Chinese military is building a test facility to simulate thermonuclear explosions on a much greater scale than comparable US centres
• Information from the experiments could give scientists a much clearer picture of how weapons perform under extreme conditions

Deep in the heart of southwest China’s mountainous Sichuan province, the military is building a machine to simulate thermonuclear explosions on an unprecedented scale.

It’s been described as a Chinese version of America’s “Z machine” – formally known as the Z Pulsed Power Facility – a giant wheel-like device developed by the United States to see how particles react under extreme radiation and magnetic pressure.

Z machines have been used in the development of nuclear weapons, from conventional warheads to the pure fusion bomb – a hydrogen bomb that can in theory be made in any size, cost a fraction of today’s nuclear stockpile and burn “cleanly” without producing radioactive fallout.

And for decades, the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has led the way in the field.

But now Chinese researchers are trying to build a machine that will produce much more electricity to create much more extreme environments for testing weapons, allowing scientists to delve deeper into the nuclear unknown.

The machine is being built for the military by the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics at China’s nuclear weapons development base in the city of Mianyang and is expected to be up and running in a few years, according to a Beijing-based nuclear physicist.